Terms of use

1. Who is contracting with you

Dossio is operated by [legal name to be completed] — “we”, “Dossio”. The firm or professional who opens an account is “you”.

These terms form the contract between us. They apply as soon as you open an account, including during the free trial and during the closed beta. The privacy policy and the Where your data lives page form an integral part of them.

2. What Dossio does, and what it does not

Dossio is practice management software for Quebec lawyers: matters, contacts, conflict searches, deadline computation, time entry, disbursements, billing with GST and QST, documents, calendar and reports.

Three things Dossio is not, and that no sales page will say otherwise:

• It is not legal advice. The software gives no opinion, makes no diagnosis and never replaces your professional judgment. You remain solely responsible towards your clients, the courts and the Barreau.
• It is not trust accounting software. The current version includes no trust accounting module and must not be used to keep the records required by the Regulation respecting accounting and standards of professional practice of advocates (CQLR, c. B-1, r. 5). You must keep those records elsewhere.
• It is approved and certified by no one. The Barreau du Québec certifies no practice management software. We will never write otherwise, and if you read such a claim about us anywhere, it is false.

3. The deadline calculator

The calculator applies the rules of the Code of Civil Procedure using a table of non-juridical days. It is a computation aid. Verifying the deadline remains your professional obligation, and you must not enter any deadline in your calendar on the strength of the displayed result alone.

Two safeguards exist in the product, and we describe them here so you know what you can count on: non-juridical days are data countersigned by a litigator before being treated as valid, and the calculator refuses to produce a result for a year whose table has not been validated, rather than guessing. A refusal to display is normal behaviour, not a failure.

4. Who may open an account

Dossio is intended for legal professionals and their staff, in a professional setting. By opening an account, you confirm that you have the capacity to contract and, where applicable, the authority to bind the firm you register.

The firm is responsible for the people it invites into its account: their access, their rights, and the removal of that access when a member leaves. An account is personal and is not shared — the audit log has value only if every action bears the name of a real person.

5. Two-factor authentication is not optional

The second factor is required for all access to data, without exception, without temporary waiver and without a bypass screen. This requirement is not only in the interface: it is written into the access rules of the database. An account that has not cleared its second factor reads nothing. You are responsible for safeguarding your factors and your recovery codes; losing them may result in losing access to the account, and we cannot work around that for you.

6. Your data belongs to you

Everything you record in Dossio — matters, contacts, notes, documents, time entries, invoices — remains your property and that of your clients. We acquire no right in it.

You grant us only the technical licence needed to host, transmit, back up and display that data in order to provide you the service. That licence has no other purpose. In particular:

• we do not sell or rent your data, to anyone, ever;
• we do not use it to train, fine-tune or evaluate an artificial intelligence model, nor on behalf of a third party;
• no one at Dossio reads the contents of your matters, except at your written request, for the duration of a specific support intervention, and the access is logged.

7. Professional secrecy

We know that the contents of your account are covered by professional secrecy. We undertake to treat them as such, to disclose them to no one, and to notify you without delay of any request from an authority targeting your data, unless the law forbids us from informing you — so that you can assert professional secrecy, which is yours to assert and not ours.

Our infrastructure providers and their countries of incorporation are listed on the Where your data lives page, including the fact that several are American companies subject to the CLOUD Act even when the servers are in Montreal. We would rather write it down than leave it unsaid.

Meeting your own ethical obligations — conflicts of interest, retention of files, confidentiality towards your clients — remains yours. No feature of the software relieves you of them.

8. What you undertake to do

• use Dossio lawfully and in accordance with your professional obligations;
• keep your credentials and authentication factors confidential;
• record in it only information you are entitled to record, and notify us without delay if you suspect unauthorized access to your account;
• not attempt to circumvent security measures, access another firm’s data, conduct penetration testing without our written authorization, or reverse-engineer the service;
• not resell access to the service or operate it on behalf of third-party firms without a written agreement with us.

9. Price, taxes and billing

The price is set per firm, according to the number of lawyers practising there. Your assistants, law clerks and articling students have access to the service at no charge and without limit of number. Every tier gives access to all features: a higher tier covers more lawyers, it unlocks no function.

• One lawyer: $69 per month, or $59 per month with annual billing.
• Two or three lawyers: $169 per month, or $149 per month with annual billing.
• Four to six lawyers: $299 per month, or $269 per month with annual billing.
• Seven to ten lawyers: $449 per month, or $399 per month with annual billing.

Beyond ten lawyers, each additional lawyer is billed $45 per month, or $39 per month with annual billing. These amounts are in Canadian dollars and exclude GST and QST, which are added to the invoice. Included storage is 500 GB per firm; beyond that, each block of 100 GB is billed $15 per month.

The subscription is billed in advance. Moving to a higher tier mid-period is billed pro rata and takes effect immediately; returning to a lower tier takes effect the following period and gives rise to no refund for the current one. When the number of lawyers exceeds your tier, we tell you and offer you the matching tier: we never bill a higher tier without your agreement.

We may change our prices. An increase applies only after at least 60 days’ notice sent by email, never during a period already paid for, and it opens your right to terminate at no charge before it takes effect.

Exception — your firm’s rate is locked. The price in force when you subscribe remains yours for as long as the subscription stays active, even if our prices rise afterwards. An increase therefore applies only to new subscriptions, and the 60 days’ notice above concerns only cases where we would have to break that lock — in which case your right to terminate at no charge applies in full. If your subscription is terminated and later resumed, the rate in force at resumption applies.

10. Trial, renewal and termination

The trial lasts 14 days and asks for no credit card. When it ends, access stops: no amount is charged automatically, because no payment method was ever entrusted to us. There is nothing to cancel to avoid being billed.

The paid subscription then renews automatically, monthly or annually as you choose. We undertake to send you a renewal notice by email at least 30 days before each annual renewal, stating the coming date and amount.

You may terminate at any time from your account, without speaking to us and without reason. Termination takes effect at the end of the period already paid for. A monthly subscription in progress is not refunded; an annual subscription is refunded pro rata for whole months not yet begun.

Terminating must be as simple as subscribing. If the self-serve termination function is not available when you look for it, write to us at bonjour@dossio.ca: termination then takes effect on the date of your email, not the date of our reply.

11. Getting your data out

You may obtain all of your data — matters, contacts, time entries, invoices and documents — in an open, usable format, at any time, with no exit fee and without having to justify your request.

Until self-serve export is available in your account settings, it happens on written request and we deliver it within 15 days.

After termination, your data remains recoverable for 90 days. After that, it is destroyed or anonymized according to the schedules set out in the privacy policy. Take your copy before you leave: we cannot guarantee being able to reconstitute a closed account.

12. Availability and changes to the service

We aim for continuous availability and we carry out planned maintenance outside business hours where possible. We do not, at this stage, commit to a numerical availability target: we would rather promise nothing than promise a figure we do not yet measure.

The service evolves. We may add, change or withdraw features. Withdrawing a feature you use is subject to at least 60 days’ notice, unless it is required for security or compliance reasons.

13. Closed beta

Dossio is currently offered to a limited number of firms in closed beta. During this phase, features may appear, change or disappear faster than after launch, and some announced features are not yet delivered. The security, confidentiality and data-export commitments of this contract apply in full as of now: those are precisely the ones that cannot wait for a version 1.0. If your beta data consists of real client matters, keep the backup your practice requires in any event.

14. Warranties

We provide the service with reasonable skill and diligence. Subject to the following section and to the warranties the law makes mandatory, the service is provided as is: we do not warrant that it will be free of errors, uninterrupted, or suited to a particular use you had in mind without telling us.

15. Limitation of liability

What we cannot exclude, and do not exclude. Article 1474 of the Civil Code of Québec prohibits excluding or limiting liability for intentional or gross fault, and for bodily or moral injury. Nothing in these terms purports to do so, and no stipulation is to be read as derogating from it.

Subject to that reservation, our total liability towards you, on all grounds combined and for the whole of any twelve-month period, is limited to the greater of the following two amounts: the sums you paid us during the twelve months preceding the triggering event, or $5,000.

We are not liable for indirect damages — loss of profits, loss of clientele, loss of opportunity, harm to reputation — even if we had been advised of their possibility.

Nor are we liable for the consequences of a missed deadline where it arises from data you entered, from a deadline you did not verify, or from a result the calculator refused to produce and that was not computed some other way. Verifying deadlines remains a professional act.

16. Suspension and termination by us

We may suspend or terminate an account for non-payment not cured after notice, unlawful use, or conduct that compromises the security of the service or the data of other firms. Except in a security emergency, we notify you first and allow you a reasonable time to correct the situation. We may also discontinue the service for business reasons, on at least 90 days’ notice. In every case, the data recovery period set out in section 11 applies, and sums paid in advance for a period not provided are refunded to you.

17. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. A significant change is announced to you by email at least 30 days before it takes effect, stating what is changing. If it is unfavourable to you, you may terminate at no charge before it takes effect and obtain a refund of the portion paid in advance. Continuing to use the service after it takes effect constitutes acceptance. The version in force is always the one published at this address, with its version number and date.

18. Superior force and assignment

Neither party is liable for a failure caused by superior force (force majeure) within the meaning of article 1470 of the Civil Code of Québec. You may not assign this contract without our written agreement; we may assign it in the course of a reorganization or a sale of the business, in which case we notify you and you may terminate at no charge within 30 days if the assignee does not take up the security and confidentiality commitments in these terms.

19. Governing law, language and miscellaneous

This contract is governed by the law applicable in Quebec and falls under the jurisdiction of the courts of Quebec.

French is the language of the contract. Any translation is provided as a courtesy only; in case of divergence, the French version prevails.

If a clause is held null or unenforceable, the others remain in force. Our tolerance of a breach does not constitute a waiver. These terms, the privacy policy and the Where your data lives page constitute the entire agreement between us as to their subject matter.

20. Contacting us

For any question about this contract, write to bonjour@dossio.ca. For a question about the protection of personal information, see the privacy policy, which names the designated person in charge and how to reach them.